Before Google Reader I would visits websites and blogs on a daily basis to get the latest news on whatever interests I most wanted to read about that day.  If I came upon an article or site that I wanted to save for later I would either bookmark it or add it to my del.icio.us bookmarks.  And if I wanted to share it with a friend I’d send it via e-mail, IM, or through another social website, but with the introduction of Google Reader that has all changed.

I realized the other day that the features available in Google Reader have changed my internet habits in such a way that I am now using fewer outside sites or services to read my feeds, share articles, bookmark articles, and comment on things people are sharing.  Google Reader has for the most part become a one stop shop for me, which is great for me, but could have a negative impact on the sites I read.

Google Reader: My One Stop Shop

First off Google Reader allows me to read blog updates directly in reader, assuming that the feed is displaying the complete article.  As long as the complete article is being shared via RSS I never have to actually visit any of the sites which I regularly read.

Second I find myself using social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us a lot less than I did in the past.  Instead I can simply star the article in Google Reader and reference it from my starred items at a later time.  I’ll admit this isn’t as organized as something like del.icio.us, but being able to search my starred features makes retrieving things fairly simple.

Third I find myself sharing fewer blog posts through social outlets like Twitter, because I can share with my friends interesting articles directly through my shared items on Google Reader.  Not only can I share with them, I can also add comments about the article that aren’t limited to a 140 characters.  That’s not to say that I’m not sharing articles through other sources, but I am finding that only articles of the highest quality are getting this extra attention.  Articles I feel are informative and useful to people, but aren’t really anything over the top incredible will most likely make it through with just a share in Google Reader.

Lastly Google Reader has moved some of my interactions and conversations about articles away from sites like Twitter and into the new Google Reader comment feature.  This was a feature that I have wanted from a long time, mostly because if someone shares something I find useful or interesting I want to thank them for it, or sometimes give them my thoughts on it.  The ability to comment directly to the person who shared the item in Google Reader is quick and efficient and it doesn’t require me to login or open another service just to comment on the item shared with me.

For me the ability to do all of this in one place is a blessing.  It’s much more efficient and it still allows me to store and share information I find useful.  However I feel that this comes as a disadvantage to some of the blogs I read.  I’m not going to sites anymore, which means I am not seeing advertisements.  I’m not storing articles on sites like del.icio.us as much as I have in the past and therefore not passing the value of a network like del.icio.us in terms of links and traffic.

Similarly I am not sharing sites the way I used to.  Sites I have to physically visit to read an article will more often than not get a Digg, Stumble, Mixx, or the like because from the site I can use my Shareaholic toolbar to quickly spread the item.  I understand that I could consciously do this regardless of whether or not I read the article in reader or not, but for some reason it just doesn’t click for me to do this all the time.

Finally my means of conversation about articles has changed drastically, which greatly reduces the number of people who see my comments about a certain article.  Commenting about or sharing comments on articles through means of Twitter and other social websites allow for a great number of people to potentially pick up on the conversation.  On Twitter I have 496 followers that could pick up on the story and potentially share it, link to it, bookmark it, etc.  In reader I am sharing with 18 people, which is a significant decrease in the number of people which see my shared article.

The Remedy

As a blogger or webmaster this is something to consider when it comes to your RSS feeds.  I’m sure I’m not the only person doing this, meaning you are potentially missing out on some great opportunities.  To remedy some of these issues I would suggest the following:

1. Don’t provide your complete article via RSS.
2. Plug ads into your RSS feeds for those who don’t come to your physical site.
3. Develop reader call to action. Ask for feedback or peoples’ thoughts at the closing of your posts to entice readers to comment on the post. Commenter’s will be required to visit your site to share their insight.

These are just some ways in which you might improve your visitor traffic and better visitor interaction, but I’m sure there are other opportunities out there.

What are your thoughts? Do you use Google Reader or a similar feed reader?  Have you found that it changes the way you interact with some of your favorite blogs and websites?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

So tonight I was looking up something here on the blog and I noticed that my Friend Connect avatars looked different.  Suddenly there were random favicon’s associated with various members of my site.  It’s possible they were there all along and I was oblivious to them, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.

I did a little bit of research to see if anyone else had noticed this and at the moment it doesn’t appear so.  I did some blog searching, Google searching, even checked the Friend Connect website and Google group and came up empty handed.  What’s strange is that I don’t exactly understand why the the icons are there and what they mean.

You’ll notice in one instance there is a Twitter favicon next to real estate SEO John Jones‘ avatar.  Below him you’ll notice that David Harry and a number of other members of my site have the Google favicon.

To see what it did I tried clicking on it.  When I wasn’t logged in to Friend Connect it did nothing.  I logged in to Friend Connect and tried it again; all this did was refresh the users Friend Connect profile information.

I am at a total loss as to what these mean and why some members have them and others don’t.  Furthermore what identifies what favicon your avatar receives?  Is this even supposed to be there or is this just something Google is playing with?

Here’s another interesting thing I noticed.  I went to scope out some other blogs that I knew had Friend Connect; including David Harry’s SEO Blog, Samir Balwami’s Left the Box, James Morris’ blog and Collective Thoughts and of all of these the only favicon’s I could find were Google favicon’s.  John Jones is the only person I have found so far that has the Twitter favicon in the lower right corner of his avatar.

What’s going on Google?  Anyone have any insight?  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

So over the last couple of months people have been noticing some strange behavior in regards to sitelinks.  In December Search Engine Roundtable made note of sitelinks being cut off possibly due to the use of periods in the text.  Then today, exactly a month after the last sitelinks post, Search Engine Roundtable reported that many sites are seeing their sitelinks disappear and reappear.

However, I don’t find any of these things as confusing as the results I discovered last night while looking up information about the Los Angeles Kings hockey game I was attending.  I did a search in Google for ‘la kings’ and when I got there I was presented with the following SERP.  Take a look at the sitelinks for the Kings website.  See anything strange?

If you didn’t catch it, one of the sitelinks goes to ‘Pittsburgh Penguins Team Home Page’, which isn’t exactly LA Kings relevant.  I thought maybe because the team sites are subdomains of nhl.com that maybe that was what caused the problem, though every other sitelink is part of the Kings’ website.

Upon further investigation I found one more oddity in all of it.  The link says ‘Pittsburgh Penguins Team Home Page’ however the link directs you to the Pittsburgh Penguins store.  In this case not only is the sitelink irrelevant to the page being displayed, but it’s either directing to the wrong page or displaying improper anchor text. Clearly something is going on at Google as of late, but what exactly is happening.  With changes in things like indexing and sitelinks it makes me wonder if perhaps we are seeing recent algorithm changes backfire.

NHL Team Stats

One other thing I noticed, which I wasn’t aware previously is that the first result in Google gives me the team stats; wins, losses, ties.  It also gives you information on the last game played and the next game to be played.  What’s even more impressive is that I did some additional team searches and on the day of a game it will show you the score for the games played by that team and includes a breakdown of goals scored in each period.  This probably isn’t new, but it’s new to me, and I think it’s a pretty sweet feature to have for us hockey fans.